Kameir

What to do with all the photos you are taking? Set up a Photo blog? There might be an easier way to store your photos. Check put Photobin.com. Photobin let’s you create your own photo book. No more ‘photo mania’ – don’t ever hunt for your photos again on different hard drives, mobile devices and flash storages.  Create an easy photo diary without ever loosing any of your precious memories. Simply upload your photo using any mobile device or pc and upload it to Photbin. Or scan your photo to a computer and save it. Don’t have the time or equipment? Simple mail your photos to Photobin and they will do the work for you.

Did you know .. ? Originally all photographs were monochromatic, or hand-painted in color. Although methods for developing color photos were available as early as 1861, they did not become widely available until the 1940s or 50s, and even so, until the 1960s most photographs were taken in black and white. Since then, color photography has dominated popular photography, although black and white is still used, being easier to develop than color.

Is marketing on Facebook and Twitter actually worth the time? Naturally the answer is ‘it depends’ 😉 But seriously, it depends – like anything in marketing – if you can actually measure it. To me that means: measuring it in terms of its effect on the bottom-line of your business (see also my article on Social Media ROI).

But first let me dispel a typical ‘Facebook Myths’: It is very unlikely that Facebook indeed has more than 900 Million active users (as claimed on their WikiPedia page (May 2012)). It’s more likely that the site has about 215 Million active users. You can easily extrapolite this from the Compete.com statistics (the site seems to be off by about 40% on average (based on the sites that I control)).

Another myth is that user actually read your wall post. They don’t .. at least for the most part. The same holds true for tweets (see more Twitter stats here).

OK, so with that out off the way, ask yourself what do you know about your customers (users, etc.). Do you even measure the engagement on your website and how it translates into revenue? If not, marketing on Facebook and Twitter should NOT be your priority.

Finally, a (well meaning) warning: nothing is worse than starting something and than abandoning the effort. What do you think if you are looking at a blog, Facebook Page or Twitter account that has not been updated in months? (Chances are “this person/company must have died).

TBC

Facebook has agreed to a deal to acquire mbile photo sharing app Instagram for approximately $1 billion in cash and stock. Initially Instagram will remain an independently branded standalone app that’s separate from Facebook, but the services will increase their ties to each other and it can be expected that Instagramm will eventually be folded into the Facebook brand. Although Instagramm is not making any money yet the price can likely be considered a bargain, at least compared to to eyeball valuations of Internet solutions over the past decades. Plus Facebook is in need of diversifying its positions given its current strong currency which won’t last unless the company can prove to create significant revenue from its stronghold in the social space. But the most compelling reason for the acquisition was likely the user demographic: Instagramm does not have an age limit. A large number of the user base are therefore future Facebook users (or would-be Google+ users!).

Google just released a function the company calls ‘social search’, promoting it with the statement that “Search has always brought you information from across the web.” While this statement might be true in general, it is inherently flawed when applied to Google (see Premises For A Better Search Engine). Though Google Amit Singhal, a Google Inc. information retrieval employee, said, “At Google Inc., we always want to return the most comprehensive and relevant answers to your questions, and many times those answers are in the open public Web, but many times those answers are in your own personal content.” this is at best the case for a very limited amount of content indexed by Google that has not specifically written for Google. Social search seems to suggest that popular information must be the ‘right’ information. The opposite is more likely to be true.

Despite a growing awareness for online spending, the majority of consumer transactions still happens locally – for simply reasons, really: you cannot get a hair cut from the Internet or get your car washed and most consumers still like to try on the clothes they are about to buy.

Another reason though is that mobile local search still does not fulfill the promises made by the currently leading search providers (see graphic).

Now Topsy Labs is taking another swing at it by releasing a social, realtime search engine for mobile devices. The mobile app enables users to discover trends about any topic based on data from Twitter and Google+.

The search engine comes with a clever “Social Time Machine” feature that enables users to look up results on a timeline that can be controlled with a slider.

Search queries can also automatically saved so users can revisit specific results at any time, and any piece of social content can be referenced historically for any topic, term or link.

Topsy cites a Performics study which states that 32% of users search more on mobile phones than they do on computers, and that 75% of users ople think that mobile search makes their life easier.
Well, let’s see ..

Topsy Labs is headquartered in San Francisco and was founded in 2006, the company is backed by BlueRun Ventures, Ignition Partners, Founders Fund and Scott Banister.